Joshua I of the Taklamacan
HM King Joshua I of the Taklamacan was King of the Taklamacan for a week during summer in 2006. He is notably the only monarch to have ever successfully deposed Declan I, II & V, although he returned to power after King Joshua's short reign. By late 2005, the Kingdom of the Taklamacan (for its first few months a thriving centre of art and a melting pot of ideas and creation) had gone into decline. Since the beginning of the kingdom there had been consistent conflicts with a nearby people, and the Taklamacan had recently endured internal political turmoil, with King Declan I having had to deal with a brief civil war against King Alexander I and a plot against him by Pope Alexander I. A few months after the rebellions by the two Alexanders, Joshua managed to sieze the throne of the Taklamacan by bribing citizens and exploiting their fears about the current turmoil that the nation was going through. He deposed King Declan I and became King Joshua I of the Taklamacan. The decline of the Taklamacan continued - if not worsened - under Joshua I, who was regarded as somewhat of an incompentent ruler. Joshua ordered a massive increase in the amount of resources that the Taklamacanian outposts sent to the Kingdom, leading to the outposts declaring independence from the Taklamacan. With the main sources of the Kingdom's resources cut off, the societal and cultural decline of the Taklamacan accelerated. Declan I had gone into exile to the southern, sandy regions of the Taklamacan, joined by many of his supporters who were rebelling against Joshua I. Declan was informed that the outposts had broken away from the Kingdom under Joshua I, and he and his supporters seized control of the southernly-most region of the Taklamacan and began construction of a weapon to attack Joshua I with. Meanwhile, a group of "barbarians" who had a teritory bordering the Northern Grass Plains of the Taklamacan started to attack the Kingdom from the north. The Taklamacanian army under Joshua I was stretched to breaking point trying to fend off the barbarian attackers in the north and attempting to deal with Declan's insurgency in the south. The Taklamacanian army was defeated by the barbarians at the confrontation of Hedge Row, and Joshua I was forced to abandon the northern part of the Kingdom. At the end of this week of Joshua I being in power, chaotic even by the standards of this period of Taklamacanian history, Declan I and his supporters activated their weapon, catapulting large quantities of dust and sand at the capital of the Taklamacan, making things extremely difficult for Joshua I and his forces. The Taklamacanian people (who had been warned in advance that the capital was about to come under attack) forced Joshua I to abdicate - Declan I was invited back to the capital and re-enthroned. By this point however, the Kingdom had been severely weakened - it had lost its outposts and a large piece of northern territory, and the resources they provided. The barbarian attacks continued, and the Taklamacan entered a long period of weakness and decline which would not end until late 2007.